Little Shop of Horrors

As the song goes, from small things big things one day come. In the early 1980s, Little Shop of Horrors, a witty and typically microbudgeted comedy-horror film by Roger Corman, was transformed into a smash Broadway musical with book and lyrics by Howard Ashman and music by Alan Menken. This weekend, Schenectady Light Opera Company will revive this tuneful comic gem.

The small-things-big-things maxim also applies to the hero of Little Shop of Horrors—a poor schmuck named Seymour who works as a floral assistant in a tiny skid-row shop—and to his curious horticultural projects. One of these, which looks suspiciously like an oversized Venus Flytrap, develops a taste for flesh. Meanwhile, Seymour pursues Audrey, the girl of his dreams. Can he manage a man-eating plant and a romance at the same time?

This production features Stephen McCauley Jr. as Seymour, Allie Mantica as Audrey, Sawyer Harrington-Verb as the voice of the killer plant, and, as the girl-group Greek chorus who hold the whole thing together, Alexis Rivera, Gabrielle Straight and India McKinney.